Over the past few years, there has been a crafts boom with increasing numbers of young, fashionable things picking up knitting needles or sewing kits and making their own clothes.  Only recently, The Guardian started running a 'Make your own designer clothes and accessories' feature with tips on how to recreate designer items such as a Jade Jagger bracelet or a Giles Deacon ruff t-shirt at home. But, while many of us love the idea of making our own clothes, not all of us have a natural patience with the paper pattern. And this is where Clothkits comes in.

MAKE YOUR OWN CLOTHES

In contrast to the mass produced, quick fix fashions of which we’ve all frankly tired, Clothkits helps people to make beautiful quality, well designed clothes - and without the complication of paper patterns. All the cutting lines are printed directly on the fabric in a simple format and each Clothkit contains all you need to complete the project including thread, buttons and any other necessary haberdashery, as well as illustrated instructions to guide you through the project. A company of the moment, Clothkits fits in perfectly with a new cultural ethos that follows trends in slow food, knitting, green living and values based around the notion that time spent is value gained.

70s FAVOURITE

But the ride hasn’t always been so smooth. Set up in 1968, Anne Kennedy ran Clothkits throughout the 70s and early 80s as a hugely successful textile business - when she sold the brand to one of her textile producers in 1988, it had 400 or more staff plus a database of over 250,000. The new owner tried to expand the shops (from 10 to 17 in one year), but within a short space of time, realised it wasn’t working and sold Clothkits to Freemans, who was naturally very interested in this enormous database. The Clothkits ‘specialogue’ was run alongside the Freemans product for three years, before being sucked into the Freemans brand in 1991 and the Clothkits brand made dormant. It was a great shame. But times had changed significantly by this point with a decline in home sewing continuing throughout the 90s.

CONTEMPORARY TEXTILES

The company remained inactive for the next 17 years and might well have stayed that way had Kay Mawer not been looking for a new project to get her teeth into. Trained as a Fine Artist, Kay was working as an amateur dress maker with pattern making skills when she came across Clothkits. She explains, “I had always been passionate about vintage and contemporary textiles but it was not until the arrival of my first daugther in 1991 (both my daughters are my models!) that suddenly the penny dropped! I had been searching for a commercially viable project that wouldn’t compromise my desire to work in a creative environment and suddenly Clothkits seemed to be the answer.”

NO MORE INSTANT FIXES

For a whole year, Kay negotiated with Freemans, signing contracts to purchase the brand as well as trademarks and copyrights to old designs before finally re-launching the brand in February 2007. “It has been a real privilege to relaunch the company”, she says. “The response has been huge and the goodwill towards the brand extraordinary. Clothkits are the perfect pastime for those weary of the instant fix. When you make something and invest time in doing so, you don’t throw it away. You love it, keep it and pass it down through siblings and friends.” The brand is going from strength to strength with visitors to the site choosing the sewing kits over the readymade items, also available, time and time again. As Kay says, “It’s the kits that people are buying – people want to make and sew!”

To visit Clothkits, click here.

By Emily Jenkinson

Uploaded 13th March 09.